Question Is it animal abuse to spay/neuter an animal? Most people justify spay/neutering by pointing out that if we sterilize animals, there will be fewer needier animals. But if that's true, why not forcibly sterilize people in third world countries (at least in areas with population problems)?

Accepted:
April 13, 2009

Comments

I think the basic reason why it is acceptable to sterilize non-human animals and not impoverished people is that animals do not have reproductive rights, but people do. I think it is a fundamental human right to have choices regarding when to have children, with whom to have them, and how many to have. Being very poor does not weaken one's claim on human rights. (Even people who philosophically or religiously object to contraception believe in reproductive rights to a limited extent. They believe they have the right to let nature or God make the reproductive choices for them.)

Animals, on the other hand, have no reproductive rights. This may seem odd, given the recent progress in animal rights. I am sure there are animal right activists who believe that pets ought to reproduce without human intervention, but this must be a small minority. Most mainstream animal rights groups urge sterilization to benefit animal welfare.

I agree with the you that spaying/neutering raises difficult moral questions. On its face, it's abusive, since sterilization probably lowers quality of life for animals. So why do animal protection groups like the Humane Society encourage it? Because sterilizing animals lowers the number of unwanted animals that wind up being euthanized in animal shelters. As it is, an animal is euthanized every 6 seconds.

On the issue of sterilizing humans, here's food for thought. Suppose that excess human populations were euthanized in "people" shelters. Make that one every 6 seconds. If that were the situation, and it could not be altered, it might not seem so terrible to sterilize people as a way of reducing the number of killings. Sterilizing to prevent later killing, makes a certain amount of sense in both cases.

Of course, we wouldn't put up with killing humans to control overpopulation, while even many animal protection groups don't object to killing animals for that purpose. That's the question that probably is the most basic one here. Why is it permissible kill animals to reduce overpopulation, if it's wrong in the human case? I think the answer is that, while killing is never trivial, there are major differences between killing people and killing animals having to do with the way human beings contemplate and value their futures.

So the answer to your question is--we sterilize animals to prevent having to kill them later, and we can justify killing animals for that purpose (but couldn't justify killing people for that purpose) because of very basic differences between animals and people.